Dungeons & Dragons Games - Fleshing Out Your Character

Belestol The Quickening, also known as Belle by her friends, or dangerous by her enemies. Belle is as ravishing as she is dangerous. She has an uncanny ability to entice, entertain and hold wonderful conversations with princes and kings as well as low born and pauper. She carries a superb and quick wit, and even quicker deadly skills with a blade. Especially knives and daggers, long ones, short ones, thin ones, others that can be thrown, she, you could say, has a passion for blades.

Belle has seen it all in her short life, trolls and goblins destroyed her family and village, she wandered for years picking up skills which would serve her well later in life. But it was a locksmith with a brilliance of skills with a dagger that taught her how to survive the rough streets of Mordimar. Saving a band of adventurers along the thieves highway one evening from rival thieves from another gang ensured that if she ever set foot in town again, her death was certain.

Joining her new friends made for a few rocky years, the outside forests and mountains terrified this child of towns and cities. Learning languages and how to write by Thain the adventuring Cleric increased her knowledge of the world. Noble born Mystra the enchantress gave her skills and knowledge of courtiers, royalty and high tradition. Merek the barbarian taught her courage to face any adversary and Yanatos the taciturn dwarf showed her how to keep her humor and sanity in the face of death. In turn she taught them how to survive the streets and underways of towns and cities and how to become one of the most dangerous persons on the planet with a knife in hand to hand combat.

She also loved problem solving, even as a child she would help the local locksmithy and he would create ingenious 'locks' provided as a game just simply for her amusement to solve. Her natural grace helped with her cunning, and without realizing, she was a much widely experienced thief. Her years on the streets, her natural cunning, her beauty and a combination of all these helped her to become someone stunning with beauty and a dangerous adversary.

You have rolled for stats, got your skills, know your feats, grabbed your adventuring gear, but who the hell are you? Where are your from? Whats your back story?

Fleshing out your character, giving it substance by creating someone who reflects a three dimensional person is a fundamental factor in these type of games. It is a 'role playing' game remember? No? thats not your type of game? You would rather a 'stats built up to a point until I am bursting with god mode' playing game? OK, interesting, if one or two dimensional characters are your thing.

Well for one, games like Dungeons & Dragons and it's rule books would be a lot slimmer.

Think about when an actor is on the screen for a movie, they find out or create a back story for their character, or even for a period of time spend it with people for that particular role. They play a cop, they spend time with a cop, they play a teacher, most likely spend time with a teacher. This is knowing how to be able to play a given role for the role to be played.

Yes, there is no magician, thief or clergy person from medieval times you can draw on for 'method' acting, but one can imagine.

Reasons to bring a bit of persona and flair and drama to your character is it makes the game more interesting. Not just for you but for all the other players AND for the Dungeon Master as well.

Whats the benefits for fleshing out your character? Lets look at some possible and potential reasons.

• You are a (fighter, or mage, or priest, or thief, or druid or dwarf or elf)This is PRIMARILY the main motivation for why your character has his or her particular choice of 'role' as a fighter of prowess, a person of the cloth, a mage of secrets and mysticism, a cunning person who lurks to steal. Something greatly affecting their life has helped to make a decision on choosing this major 'life profession'.
• Whats your background? What was life like growing up in your house, place, hamlet, village, town, city?
• What is your culture like?
• What are some traditions of your area?
• Are you low born? A noble? A street person? Don't know whom your parents are? Raised by wolves?
  

So, now we have an understanding of your background and why your motivated for your particular 'profession'. Now you need to individualize your character, this is a way to put some meat on those bones.

Now we can look at some particular personal traits, this is part of why you are you. You can be as braod or as specific as you like. Like the phrase the 'sum of these parts'. These are some of the 'parts'

• Are left or right handed?
• Whats your favourite colour?
• Are you the strong silent type? Or can talk with a mouthful of marbles?
• Do you have a compulsion?
• Are you ritualistic? As in, you may draw a particular pattern in the air with your sword just before entering battle.
• Do you wear jewelery? Have a tattoo or are covered in them? Wear something black everyday?

These are the habits or small daily tasks you have picked up from birth, or acquired in your life, which may have come about, because you like it, it fits your personality or you have a compulsion for a bit of flair.

Ahhh this is your particular archetype and affects how you deal with life as an outlook, and how you deal with others as well as how they see you or deal with you.

Here you can also use your chosen alignment as a guide as well. No good having lawful tendencies if your a chaotic evil type.

Are you - friendly? megalomanical? egotisical? morbid? punctual? easy going?

I once played with a party of characters of Kobolds, Gnolls and Goblins and my character had an ego the size of Kansas, thought he was a leader material (he was a grunt) and felt he was Noble born ( was of low birth) as well as thinking he was ridiculously good looking( Pigs would run away from him in disgust). Also because of this, he didn't understand why human females would want to either run from him or run a sword through him. He loved human females, not kobold females.

Well that is entirely up to you.

Does you character have any dreams, goals, aspirations? Is there a overriding driving force for your characters existence, like revenge for the untimely death of your parents? Is there an ultimate goal of understanding that given enough time, dedication, achievement, skill, feats and doing the almost impossible, that there may be a path to immortality or godhood?

You can flesh out your character on a single piece of paper. Or you can even add to it as you think about how your character develops over time. Even when your character is progressing as you play it.

Given that your characters have a background, a personality, quirks, and other interesting aspects that have occurred in their life. This gives you, the DM, a wealth of detail and material to work with that you cannot have even paid for.

Discuss this with your players, if they like the idea, you may decide to read through their characters and develop new plot devices for your ongoing campaign and adventures. How would the players react to one of them growing up hating their abusive father, only to realize that now, he is the Primary General of armies fighting against the forces you and your party leads?

Or your parents have been slain by a mysterious entity which turns out to be a vampire who has been pulling strings for years in the background which has affected you and your party. Now you finally have an opportunity to bring on a final confrontation.

But even then, your play of plots does not have to be so grand. What about an area of a dungeon where unbeknownst to other party members, a puzzle needs to be solved by the thief, but he or she cannot see red and the puzzle is entirely of a red colour.

You have an opportunity to play on the characters foibles, fears, traits and as well as there strengths, strong attributes or great and beneficial skills.

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When you have 'depth' in your character, the additional possibilities of play for both the actual players and the dungeon master can make for some memorable games long spoken about after they have been played.